Devlin: Delay of games right call in spring season

AURORA — High school administrators are failing spring sports athletes and don't seem to care.

We're in our 92nd go-round and not much has changed. Oh, we've gone through the decades, grown new cities and suburbs and added schools, sports and classifications, but have been left in the dust in terms of leadership and foresight.

The time has come for significant change. But will Coloradans embrace it?

We need to delay the start of spring sports in the worst way, a relatively simple move that has been complicated needlessly by school officials who have long put their lack of nerve and work ethic in the way of logical progress.

Consider: Push back the start of spring play until at least mid-March, begin the season April 1 then extend the stretch run into, say, the middle of June.

There. Was that so hard?

I can't figure out these people. Then again, I can. Those in charge have looked the other way for too long and seem oblivious to the monotonous run of problems and conflicts that accompany every end-of-school season. What? Those folks worry? All they care about is getting the school year over with and heading into summer vacation.

It's depressing, really.

Every March we have preseason drills that overlap with the end of the basketball season. Every late March we have a series of postponements of games that would rival any airline flight schedule. And every late March we have competitors playing on yellow, dormant grass and dirt that's more like concrete.

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Ask the baseball players about taking groundballs on infields that aren't close to being ready. Better yet, ask the girls golfers, who play early rounds on courses that appear to have been bleached. And ask tracksters, who are held back because of the fear of pulling a muscle.

While this issue doesn't concern boys swimmers and divers, and lacrosse and soccer participants at least have access to a reasonable amount of artificial surface, check with the tennis players about how much fun it is to play in the wind and cold.

While there has been rumblings for years about a spring sports extension interfering with summer play (average game attendance: not many more than a dozen) and the recent ridiculous notion of cutting back the number of basketball games in the winter (huh?) to begin spring play even earlier, the biggest problem is officials' fear over lack of control of student-athletes out of school. I know, go figure.

Please, make the change, leap forward and do what's right for the kids.

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